Lunch Tuesday: Wine Wednesday
Posted May 26, 2010 12:01 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
If you’ve been to a dinner party in the past few years, chances are you’ve seen a bottle or two of Fuzion wine.
First, it was an inexpensive malbec that soared off LCBO shelves. Then it was a succession of other reds that made Familia Zuccardi an Argentinean success story.
The winery went from selling 800 cases a year to selling 800,000, the company’s Toronto representative explains.
Alex Patinios, president of Dionysus wines and spirits, adds that he thinks the Santa Julia and Zuccardi brands will do just as well.
Two weeks ago, I experienced my first-ever wine tasting while on vacation in California. Clearly, that was all the qualification necessary for this assignment: I spent an hour on Tuesday afternoon upstairs at Kultura drinking Zuccardi wines, easily the youngest person in the casually swank room.
A long wooden table is covered in bottles, open and ready for sampling. Several black-clad waiters mingle with trays of beef tartare, seafood potstickers, deep-fried cubes of tofu and arancini with goat cheese; and there are triangles of crisp naan on the side tables.
I imagine the appetizer onslaught as a two-pronged objective: highlight the kitchen at Kultura, and keep everyone from getting too buzzed on the many, many bottles.
I’ve tried the 2009 Fuzion Chenin/Chardonnay ($7.45) which is available at the LCBO, and the 2009 Fuzion Alta Torrontes Pinot Grigio ($8.95), which will arrive in stores in July.
Next, it’s the Santa Julia Malbec Rose ($12.95), made with organic grapes, and a Fuzion Shiraz/Malbec ($7.45).
José Alberto Zuccardi and his son Sebastian. Image credit Familia Zuccardi.
At this point, I’m done drinking. Which is good, because José Alberto Zuccardi is ready to talk.
The director of the family winery is in Toronto to promote the new Zuccardi wines. Earlier in the day, he had met with representatives from the LCBO.
Now, all he wants to talk about are his children.
“Miguel, my youngest son, makes olive oil. Julia, my daughter, is in charge of tourism at the winery, including a restaurant. And Sebastian, my oldest son, is an oenologist,” Zuccardi says.
“I didn’t force them to go into the business, but they did it anyway,” he adds.
Zuccardi’s father started the winery in the 1950s as a way to demonstrate irrigation equipment.
Much of the country is desert, Zuccardi says, and the Mendoza region can sometimes see only 200 millimeters of precipitation a year – “with very bad distribution.”
“It’s hot but the temperature change is very great between night and day,” he continues.
Now, Argentina is the fifth-largest producer of wine in the world and Familia Zuccardi employs 650 people.
As for the elaborate tasting?
“The best wine is the wine you like. You don’t have to know, you just have to drink,” Zuccardi says with a smile.
“After that, well, you learn.”
